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Coinbase ‘Paves Way’ For New Altcoin Support With ERC20 Upgrade

Posted by William Suberg on Mar 27, 2018

New altcoins may be coming to Coinbase and GDAX after a blog post reveals ERC20 protocol support.

Coinbase has announced its intention to support ERC20 tokens on its exchange, reversing previous statements from January, in a blog post published March 26.

In the post, Coinbase said its decision to support ERC20, which is the technical standard used for smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and the protocol used for many of the thousands of altcoin assets in existence, “paves the way for supporting ERC20 assets across Coinbase products in the future.”

The move comes several weeks after the US’ largest exchange and wallet provider added ERC20 token support to its Ethereum wallet and DApp (decentralized application) browser Toshi.

The announcement came with a conspicuous pledge not to reveal any likely altcoin candidates for future hosting.

A previous post last updated March 17 reiterated new asset additions would be done under stringent controls, a commitment that followed December’s highly controversial addition of support for altcoin Bitcoin Cash, which saw Coinbase accused of insider trading.

A month later, CEO Brian Armstrong stated publicly in the first incarnation of the asset addition blog post that neither Coinbase nor its sister exchange GDAX would seek to offer any new cryptocurrencies.

“As of the date of this statement, we have made no decision to add additional assets to either GDAX or Coinbase. Any statement to the contrary is untrue and not authorized by the company,” he wrote Jan. 4.

“Coinbase will only list assets after they are listed on GDAX,” the latest announcement meanwhile continues, also stating:

“After evaluating factors such as liquidity, price stability, and other market health metrics, we may choose to add any ERC20 asset added to GDAX to the Coinbase platform.”